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The Emergence of E-Learning Needs in Participatory Re-Design of e-Service

Angela Di Fiore (Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento, Trento, Italy), Francesca Fiore (Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento, Trento, Italy) and Vincenzo D'Andrea (Department of Information Science and Engineering, University of Trento, Trento, Italy)

Abstract

Several research initiatives are nowdays focusing on the idea of “smart” cities or territories, where “smart” refers to the assumption that information technology would improve the quality of life in the city. In our work, we discuss the contribution we gave to Smart Campus, a research project aimed at creating a community that would enable the emergence of a virtual campus in a university town. Our focus was to improve the quality of the students' participation to the research project. Several interesting findings emerged from the work described in this paper, the most relevant being the importance given to functionalities replacing what students currently do with ad-hoc solutions using a range of unrelated services.

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The Frame Of Reference

The best description of the Smart Campus project is the one found in the project website:

“Smart Campus is a lab and a community. The lab builds a social and technical environment for collaborative service design. The community is composed of all students, researchers and campus staff, interested in taking advantage from the Smart Campus services, and in participating to their design.

Smart Campus provides advanced Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions to catalyze the creativity and enthusiasm of all people involved in a University campus, leading them to become active producers of innovative services designed to support their lives.“ (Text from: http://www.smartcampuslab.it)

From a technical point of view, Smart Campus is an Android app or even better an app acting as a container for smore specialized apps. The app was created by TrentoRise, a research institute on education and innovation systems, in order to improve the lives of University of Trento students. As underlined by the name choosen for this project, the initiative is part of a set of projects and initiatives sharing the vision of a smart city.

The “container” application is currently composed of six modules designed to meet all the students’ needs: